Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Hokkien language uses a broad array of honorific suffixes or prefixes for addressing or referring to people. Most are suffixes. Honorifics are often non-gender-neutral; some imply a feminine context (such as sió-chiá) while others imply a masculine one (such as sian-siⁿ), and still others imply both.
As compared to Mandarin, Hokkien dialects prefer to use the monosyllabic form of words, without suffixes. For instance, the Mandarin noun suffix 子; zi is not found in Hokkien words, while another noun suffix, 仔; á is used in many nouns. Examples are below: 'duck' – 鴨; ah or 鴨仔; ah-á (cf. Mandarin 鴨子; yāzi)
Hokkien has aspirated, unaspirated as well as voiced consonant initials.. A total of 15 initials (or 14, in dialects with /dz/ merged with /l/) are used in Hokkien. This number does not include the three nasal consonants ([m], [n], [ŋ]), which are usually considered allophones of the non-nasal voiced initials (e.g. 命; miā; 'life' is analyzed as /bĩã ⊇ /, but pronounced as [mĩã²²]).
The Hokkien word itself when dissected means, 番; hoan; 'foreign', + 仔; á; 'diminutive noun suffix', resulting in Hokkien Chinese: 番仔; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Hoan-á; lit. 'foreigner', originally from the perspective of ethnic Chinese referring to non-Chinese people, especially historically natives of Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
The suffix of certain Mandarin words might be omitted in colloquial Singaporean Mandarin due to the use of Hokkien mono-syllabic words. For instance, the suffix " 子 zi " is commonly omitted in colloquial Singaporean Mandarin.
Taiwanese Hokkien (/ ... Whereas Mandarin attaches a syllabic suffix to the singular pronoun to make a collective form, Taiwanese pronouns are collectivized through ...
Hokkien pronouns pose some difficulty to speakers of English due to their complexity. The Hokkien language use a variety of differing demonstrative and interrogative pronouns, and many of them are only with slightly different meanings.
Some Hokkien people in the Philippines adopted romanized Hokkien surnames during Spanish colonial times, many of which end with "-co" (Chinese: 哥; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: ko; lit. 'older brother'), an honorific suffix that used to be used by Hokkien Chinese Filipinos appended to the end of their Hokkien Chinese given name.